Gaia Public Transport Now Rolls with Östgötatrafiken 

Last spring, we eagerly anticipated taking the next step to test and evaluate the performance of our service, Gaia Public Transport, on Östgötatrafiken’s vehicles. Now we’ve done it. And we’ve ridden a lot of buses.

Gaia Public Transport is a cloud-based solution providing public transportation vehicles with real-time updated information for signs and announcements at the exact right moment. In addition, there is driver support, and everything that happens is logged and can be monitored. 

We have been looking forward to testing our solution for real. Throughout the year, Gaia Public Transport has been one of our major internal talking points and an exciting project for our team to work on. 

For the past few weeks, ten buses have been rolling. We have monitored the buses from a distance and ridden them to check everything from when sound announcements are made to ensure they’re loud enough and have the right timing. 

We’ve tested Gaia Public Transport with excess capacity to be well-prepared. 

Gaia Public Transport was tested with excess capacity for several months to ensure the system met the requirements we set for it. We tested the solution in our lab at Gaia’s office in Norrköping and were well-prepared to take the next real-world testing step. 

This autumn, we installed and tested our solution on existing vehicles in traffic. We took into account the equipment already on board the test buses, and it worked really well, even though the hardware varied in standard. 

The testing period in traffic didn’t contain any unexpected surprises. We found and corrected some minor errors, looked into and followed up on various events, and made planned corrections.

An Exciting Flow of Real-time Data

Nils Lagnström, who works with the team behind Gaia Public Transport, says it has been fun working with Östgötatrafiken and Gaia Public Transport.

– It’s extra fun to work with something based on a flow of real-time data and a system that had to function at a high level right from the start. 

The next stop on this journey is the final delivery of the solution, which happens after it has been in operation for fourteen error-free consecutive days. Afterward, the major installation in June 2020 will take place, delivering 120 new buses equipped with hardware tailored to the solution we’ve built.